How to fix Maschine's broken workflow once and for ALL.

Of course not. Use whatever you please. My assumption is the sequencer in live you find better than maschine. I think the song layer, we have to see how the final version pans out.

 

You know if I really cared enough about this, I would find out who the top executives were at NI and make a serious effort to send a few words to them on this matter.

 

Yeah I felt the same way about other companies lol.

 

Every company is like this to a certain extent. The people at the very top are mostly concerned with a balance sheet. They regularly release expansion packs, and they are always profitable, otherwise they wouldn't do them, so things are looking good. Disgruntled users are of little concern to the people at the top, because they don't make music, they don't use the products to make a living, probably not at all apart from some occasional dabbling.

 

Although I'm not yet the biggest fan of the song layer approach (and think the vast majority if not all issues can be resolved within he current arranger), you could also describe Live's Arrangement View as an extra layer of complexity on top of its Session View. Certainly, Live's Session View and MASCHINE are not exactly the same, but still.

Also, making it like Live is really not what I would personally want. For one, Live already exists and MASCHINE should stay MASCHINE, but mostly because Live's Arrangement View is not very, hardly at all, controllable from Push and the essence of MASCHINE is that it's controllable with the MASCHINE controllers. This needs to be at the centre of any improvements, in my opinion. Hence the advantage of just significantly extending and elaborating on the current arranger.

 

Not complex at all. In fact it's more straight forward than the pattern layer. Like I said, you don't have to think about anything, you can just record straight to it and it is linear. Sounds like you are just confused and completely mistaken about what it is.

 

I wouldn't call Live's session view another layer because it's nothing more than a linear arrangement of clips. Maschine needs to be able to arrange its patterns in a way that isn't so rigid.

I would say "controllability" from hardware doesn't have to suffer at all if they just added a "position" parameter to the pattern. And when you turn the dial, it moves forward or backward in 1-bar increments on the timeline.. And it can loop, or not loop, and you can tell it how many loops. This is nothing new.

 

I am not confused at all. It is still a layer. It doesn't need to exist at all in the first place.

You should be able to just press record and already go to town without the constraints of scenes.

 

I just explained it works exactly like that. No fuss and you don't have to worry about scenes. You can just keep it in Song layer the whole time if you choose. Works like a traditional linear sequencer. Just about every thing you have complained about it addresses and every negative you said about it is totally false and not how it works. But if you want to insist it works differently than it does, I won't argue it further.

 

And I just explained that it shouldn't be needed at all. Good design does not require additional complexity. Refer to my original post.

 

You are contradicting yourself. On one had you say you don't want scenes and patterns, then you say you don't want the song layer. Which is it? Or should they scrap the current sequencer and break everyone projects so they don't playback so your brain does not have to deal with the complexity of 2 modes? Even though you don't have to use the other mode and can ignore it completely?

 

I don't understand how you are not following the logic that I have clearly laid out, when others had no problem with it. There is no contradiction anywhere. Let me try to be clearer.

1- Scenes and patterns remain, but patterns have new options: Position, and loop. No song layer is needed. The timeline IS the song. You can position any pattern anywhere on the timeline.

Keeping the scenes and patterns ensures backward compatibility, and the new options provide added flexibility. They are OFF when a legacy project is loaded.

2- Respect the people who want to compose entirely in their DAW by offering a DAW mode. This is where scenes and patterns do not need to be used. The controller outputs MIDI WITHOUT BEING IN MIDI MODE. That means you can still edit all parameters of the sounds freely, use the browser and press pads to record directly into the DAW. Without a ridiculous routing setup that needs to be repeated each time a factory group is loaded.

This is simple. And I don't appreciate the condescending nature of your comment implying that my brain doesn't understand the new mode. What I am trying to tell you is that with A GOOD DESIGN you shouldn't need to have ANOTHER SONG MODE ON TOP OF AN EXISTING LAYOUT.

 

b-righteous, I would like to add that I only now noticed that you are moderator. I really hope that you are not attacking my ideas (and insulting my intelligence) because you are "touting the company line." I hope that you are not under the impression that Native Instruments always knows best and the users can never come up with better solutions to existing problems that have been complained about for years.

 

My remarks came from you stating earlier that you wanted to do away with scenes and later talking about "linear". That does contradict the above where you want to keep scenes and patterns, thus why I was confused. You gave the impression that you wanted a straight up linear sequencer without any patterns or scenes and that is what the song layer provides and why I wondered what the issue was. But I think NI designed it this way due to all the complaints like yours earlier that folks did NOT want to deal with scenes or patterns at all. I guess be careful what you ask for or you just might get it.

 

Well,it is good that they are responding, even though I think the approach is messy by adding complexity. When I said do away with scenes, I implied that they are rigid and should be more like a suggestion, like markers. That's linear and simple.

You know how terrible it is to have an 8-bar scene loop with an 8-bar pattern on one group, and then a 2nd group that you only want active on bar 8 at the end. It's a clusterf*.

I know the song mode tries to remedy this, but so would a position parameter.

 

Well, I apologize for being condescending. Like I said, I was confused. I'm like, if he just wants the song layer features but is bothered by the fact that the other mode is still there then that is lame because you don't have to use it.

But I have heard many remarks on here about getting rid of scenes and patterns and I do suspect this is one of the reasons NI went with this design. I always maintained that patterns and scenes are fine. It's a pattern based sequencer and that is it's strength. The problem was not scenes or patterns but the implementation. I was always for just making patterns and scenes more flexible.

 

Yes! It is pattern based, that is a strength. But with those patterns should be more options and flexibility, exactly. Then everybody is happy.

But still, regardless of that some people only want the ultimate battery controller, and put drum notes in the same place as synth notes and audio - in the DAW they are already comfortable in. That's where most of my frustration lies.

 

In many circumstances, Lives's Session View and Arrangement Views are different layers e.g., you can have clips playing from Session View alongside other clips playing in the Arrangement.
Also, Session View is not "a linear arrangement of clips" and, to most minds, it's actually a non-linear collection of clips (maybe you meant Arrangement in your post though).

As I said in my first post in this thread, I do agree with most points, but just not the implementation of it. These points in particular don't make sense for continuing a good MASCHINE hardware-like workflow.

Increments of 1 bar is not and would not be sufficient. At the very least, it would need to have a range of 1/16 to 1 bar, but even still, for a truly "linear" solution, it would need a broader range still (e.g., allowing positioning from 1/128 forwards or backwards). But this is all very possible still.
However, how is this Pattern position parameter making the Pattern move? Just along the timeline, fine, but relative to what? The timeline start? That cold get quite confusing from the controllers and already gives less control from them in terms of selecting the Pattern to be moved (think how Pattern mode works: it selects a Pattern to be in the current Scene). Therefore, Scenes are still useful and required for the controller to be able to control which Pattern and area of the timeline you're focused on and which groups of Patterns are at that point in time.

There would be no need to have these features on or off, just that projects created before them would initialise with these parameters on 0. The Scenes would still be Scenes and act as the markers they already are and the anchor for where the Patterns are positioned e.g., 0 (directly on the Scene start), -1/16 (1/16 before the Scene start). +1 bar (1 bar after the Scene start).
Moving a Pattern in the arranger would also update these values according and moving one sufficiently across Scene boundaries would simply anchor it to the next nearest Scene with the appropriate position value. All very linear, representable on the arranger, and controllable from the hardwares. Any "linear" project from any DAW could be represented this way.

In addition, a "Scene" value for the default Pattern length would make recording notes or automation across Scenes much easier (i.e. less setup and less of a headache) and would essentially allow that "linear" approach to composition of setting down a few sections and then jamming across them all. The arranger/timeline already is linear in the sense of traditional DAWs, it just needs features that allow us to capitalise on it being both less linear Patterns/Scenes and the linear timeline, but ones that still work how MASCHINE works and with MASCHINE controllers.

 

This is what I like.. details are good.. that is what I meant, as I don't use live.. I know that pressing tab gives you a traditional timeline, but you can still work with clips simultaneously.

It doesn't necessarily have to be one bar, I used that as a unit of convenience. Logic snaps regions to bars, the snap precision can be determined by the grid, or pattern snap, whatever.

As for scenes still being useful, they would be as markers. A scene would be like left and right locator, that's what you're focused on and what is looping. If you change the scene length (right marker) - then it introduces silence, which is exactly what one would expect on a linear timeline.

Pattern position relative to the beginning, yes. And you should be able to insert more than 1 pattern into a scene, that will allow flexibility like for a unique pattern every 4 bars (a drum fill).

Yes, I meant 0. not as in completely off, but at its default value, meaning the current behavior is preserved, but you can change the value to move the patterns anywhere you want.

Well put.